The swarm of bees was still buzzing and circling overhead.
I had to get away from here fast, no matter what.
But as I thought that, my judgment was already one step too late.
A bee landed on my back.
Then a sharp pain lanced through me.
!!!!???
It hurts!
I've been stung!
And from the spot where I'd been stung, something was being injected into my body!
Poison!
With a bee clinging to my back, there was nothing I could do.
No wait—there was one option left.
Now was not the time to worry about low MP or whatever!
I controlled my threads with Thread Manipulation, latching them onto the bee on my back.
I bound it in place, tying it down tight.
Heave!
Grabbing the threads, I hurled the bee off my back like a shoulder throw!
I wanted to finish it off, but escaping took priority right now!
I darted behind a rocky outcrop near the wall.
With the wall and the rocks in the way, the massive bee shouldn't be able to get in here.
Sure enough, the handful of bees that had been chasing me buzzed around for a while, checking things out, then eventually gave up and flew off.
I'd somehow survived.
But I was far from unharmed.
I couldn't see it myself, but right now there was a gaping hole in my back.
My HP was down to just 6.
A single hit had taken 30 HP.
I wasn't surprised.
I already knew my defense was pretty low.
If anything, I was grateful that a spider's life force kept me alive even after such a severe wound.
My Poison Resistance being high had helped too. Whatever had been injected at the sting site was almost certainly poison. Whether I'd nullified it or not—I honestly couldn't tell in that situation whether the damage was from the poison or the stinger—but without Poison Resistance, I'd be dead by now.
With this kind of injury, I wouldn't be moving for a while.
I didn't know if natural healing would kick in either.
If that was the case, I'd want to aim for a full recovery through leveling up, like before.
To do that, I wanted to retrieve the bee I'd bound and flung aside—both for the experience points and to secure food.
That said, going out there wasn't exactly wise.
I'd use Thread Manipulation to attach a line to it and pull it in bit by bit.
Then, without warning, a bad feeling crept over me.
I peeked cautiously out from behind the rock.
There was the bee, still bound and struggling.
And slowly approaching it was another Monster.
『Elurobaradroad — LV5 — Appraisal of Status failed』
A snake.
Had that thing followed me here!?
No, that wasn't right.
Same level, but probably a different individual.
This was bad.
A snake strong enough to be boss-class from my perspective might be lurking all over this area.
If I were found in this state, I was dead.
The snake crept toward the bee.
Please, just take the bee and go. Please don't notice me.
But the snake never got the chance to do anything to the bee.
More precisely, it couldn't.
Something tore through the snake's body at an inconceivable speed.
Huh?
Was I seeing things?
That snake—the one with tough scales guarding its body—had been sliced to pieces as easily as a scrap of paper.
A snake with speed equal to mine, torn apart without even a chance to react.
『Earth Dragon Arava — LV31 — Appraisal of Status failed』
It stood there, utterly at ease.
Despite the name "dragon," its form was closer to that of a wolf.
Four sturdy limbs planted on the earth.
A long, sweeping tail.
No wings.
And there it stood—a majestic, imposing dragon.
This was bad.
My spider instincts, my human rationality, the screaming of my very soul—every single one was saying the same thing.
That thing was off-limits.
There was absolutely no chance of winning.
Forget winning—I wasn't even in the same league.
To that thing, I was nothing more than food.
No, not even prey. Just food.
The moment it entered its field of vision, getting eaten was a foregone conclusion.
That's the kind of absolute gap between us.
Having a high Level or whatever—those were trivial details compared to this.
No matter what, that thing was not something I could handle.
The Earth Dragon Arava picked up the snake's severed pieces one by one and chewed them down.
I held my breath, desperately trying not to make a sound.
『Your Proficiency has reached a certain threshold. Skill "Stealth LV1" has become "Stealth LV2"』
Shut up!
Please, just be quiet right now!
What if it notices me!
The Earth Dragon Arava finished chewing through the snake, didn't so much as glance at the bee, and walked away.
I-I'm saved.
I didn't know whether it never noticed me in the first place or spotted me and chose to let me go, but either way, I'd survived.
I'd been close to death more times than I could count, and I was literally dying right now, but this might have been the first time I'd ever felt that terrified.
Just thinking about it again sent a chill down my spine.
This was bad.
With something like that roaming around, I had to get out of this area as quickly as possible, no matter what.
I scanned my surroundings.
This was the bottom of the vertical shaft I'd fallen into.
The diameter had to be around 100 meters.
The depth was probably even more.
After all, I couldn't tell how high up it went.
The swarm of bees blanketed the sky above like a wall.
Thank goodness the distance was too great for Appraisal to work. If I'd tried to Appraise that many, I might've gotten a migraine and passed out.
To get back to my original area, I'd have to head straight into that swarm.
While climbing a cliff.
Impossible.
Clinging sideways to a cliff face, there was no way to fight.
In that position, I couldn't move quickly, and I couldn't aim my threads properly either.
It was a field that completely neutralized all my strengths.
Meanwhile, the bees could zip around the sky in every direction.
No chance of winning.
But then again, exploring the surface where that abomination lurked would be suicide.
At the bottom of the vertical shaft, several passages branched off.
Do I risk it and take a different path from the one the dragon went down?
No good.
With injuries this severe, even if it wasn't that monster, encountering any Monster would be the end of me.
This was bad.
I might be completely screwed.